Proper pet feeding and monitoring has become a major concern to pet owners in recent years. Pet owners have busy schedules and are not always available to properly feed and tend to their pet's dietary needs. Additionally, most pet owners do not regularly monitor their pets as many are working during the day outside the home. Devices exist today to allow scheduled feeding of pets. Most of these devices do not connect to a network and do not log any information that can be remotely inspected. As a result, a pet owner really does not know if the device functioned properly and will not know until they come home and inspect the device visually.
Internet enabled pet feeders do exist today but these feeders generally dispense food to a bowl or tray (as do the scheduled feeders previously mentioned). In a multi-pet home (as of 2012 55% of all cat owners in the U.S. have multiple cats and 30% of all dog owners have multiple dogs), any of the pets are enabled to eat the food dispensed. This causes problems for certain pets who have restricted diets and also leads to issues where one pet eats all of the food dispensed and the other pets are left with no food. Additionally, these feeders really are not able to determine how much a pet has eaten. They only know how much food has been dispensed. As a result, it is difficult to track a pet's eating regimen and provide veterinarians with the proper information they need when diagnosing issues. Water consumption is not even considered in the pet devices available. Water consumption amounts (whether high or low) can indicate health issues with pets such as kidney issues or diseases, including diabetes.